Barbara Love research files regarding Feminists Who Changed America

Barbara J. Love is a feminist activist and writer. She earned her B.A. in journalism from Syracuse University in 1959, and her M.A. in psychology from the New School for Social Research. Love has worked as an editor, writer, and journalist. She joined the National Organization for Women (NOW) in 1968 and, with Sydney Abbott, was at the center of efforts to persuade NOW to recognize lesbianism as a feminist issue. Love came out of the closet on NBC-TV news in the late 1970s. She has served on the board of the Veteran Feminists of America, and for eight years was a member of the National Gay Task Force. She was also a member of the Gay Liberation Front, and later of the Radicalesbians. She eventually broke off from Radicalesbians and founded CR Supergroup One, which inspired her and Sydney Abbott to co-author Sappho Was a Right On Woman (1971). Love is also the author of Foremost Women in Communications (1970). She co-founded Parents of Gays, later renamed Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG); Identity House, a counseling center for gay men, lesbians, and bisexuals and their families; the Foundation for Matriarchy, and the Matriarchist newspaper. Love is also an accomplished competitive swimmer.

She also founded the Pioneer Feminist Project, which resulted in publication of Feminists Who Changed America (2006), the first comprehensive directory to document many of the founders and leaders, including both well-known and grassroots organizers, of the Second Wave Women's Movement. It tells the stories of more than two-thousand individual women and a few notable men who helped reignite the Women's Movement and made permanent changes to entrenched customs and law.